There is a need for persons to be able to check on and monitor the sounds in the environment of a loved one who may be very young, very old or otherwise infirm and in the care of others.
Efforts have been made in this area in the past. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,640,147—Chek et al. discloses a child monitoring device which requires the parent or guardian to have a special device to generate an enabling signal to enable a monitoring device on a child. Chek et al. requires the parent or person who is doing the monitoring to have special equipment.